REVIEW: Better Call Saul – “Klick”

The following is a review of the tenth and final episode of the second season of Better Call Saul, available on AMC in the U.S. and on Netflix in Europe. Expect spoilers.

In the final episode of this season of Better Call Saul (“Klick”), we finally learn what happened to Chuck, Jimmy makes a life-changing decision, and Mike gets ready to pull a trigger. Better Call Saul co-creator (and creator of Breaking Bad) Vince Gilligan directed Klick, and wrote it with Heather Marion.

Mike Ehrmantraut has really been moving closer and closer into Breaking Bad-territory this season, and in this episode we finally saw the lengths that Mike was willing to go to, in order to get rid of the Salamancas. Even if he didn’t actually get to do anything. Ultimately, it felt like his story ran into the sand at the end of the season.

That is my main complaint about this episode. Not only did it feel cheap that Mike didn’t pull the trigger because Nacho was standing in front of him, but the note that Mike finds should have led to something in this episode. My guess is that this will finally lead Mike to Gus Fring, but I just feel like they owed us a better conclusion to Mike’s second season arc than what we got.

Thankfully, what we got out of Jimmy’s story was breathtaking. It all started with the excellent episode teaser/opener. Seeing Chuck and Jimmy’s mother cry out for Jimmy before dying, when Chuck was the only one by her side was really tough to watch. Now, I think they actually teased this scene in a Blu-Ray commentary track for the first season of Better Call Saul, but it might’ve just been from the insider podcast.

One of the remarkable things the writers have been doing with Better Call Saul is that they somehow manage to pull you in and make you actually care for Chuck, only to have him do something unforgivable. Thankfully, Chuck didn’t die from his injury in last week’s episode, but he sure did suffer from it. As he was brought into the hospital on a gurney, we were given a terrifying peek into Chuck’s psyche. Chuck was screaming that the doctors were killing him, and eventually the CAT-scan made him enter into a self-induced catatonia.

There was a moment there when you thought maybe, just maybe, Ernesto had saved Jimmy by lying to Chuck, but this show just had to end on a painful note. Jimmy may be somewhat of a con-man, but he is also a brother – and he doesn’t lose that here. He is ready to help Chuck at every moment in this episode, and one of those moments might end up hurting Jimmy severely.

Jimmy, clearly distraught, decides to come clean to Chuck, who had supposedly retired from HHM and now lived in his own Faraday cage. And then Chuck’s true colors shone through. Chuck recorded Jimmy’s confession, thus showing how low he would stoop to get one over on his brother. Chuck is just as bad as Jimmy ever was, and maybe even worse than Jimmy has been.

Jimmy always ‘slipped’ for someone other than himself: to help the elderly, to help Chuck, or to help Kim. Chuck is really rather egomaniacal. He could never make a mistake, so he got his revenge here. A truly heartbreaking and frustrating conclusion to a fantastic second season of Better Call Saul.